Post modernism photgraphy

[Sarah Carroll]

I am struggling to find any specific photographs that represent the post moderism theory, can anyone suggest a few artists ?

[John Kasaian]

Sarah,

Man Ray's stuff looks post modernist to me, but I understand that he was prepost modernist. OTOH if you want examples of work by someone who earns a wage producing post modernist art, you'd need to find a postpaid modernist or a prepostpaid modernist. But I'm just postulating here. ;-)

[Ralph]

Oh my goodness; everyone's definition is different, whether they like or don't. Seems to be more of an approach or attitude than a look.

If you know what it is when you see it, you might look at the Museum of Contemporary Photography website (www.mocp.org). Click on "Exhibitions," and from there go to "Traveling exhibitions" as well as "Past" and "Upcoming."

[julian_4860]

Off the top of my head...

Nancy Wrexwroth
Anne Arden McDonald
Cindy Sherman
Baudrillard's pics
Sally Mann's later stuff

Bear in mind there ISN'T one postmodern theory, there are zillions. You could safely argue ( more or less ) that anything from a feminist viewpoint will fit, but how you make it fit...
Unless you are doing this for a paper, I really wouldn't bother its a black hole you'll disappear down... or make an academic career

[John_4185]

Postmodernism replaced concern with objects in front of the camera with self-referential discourse; it is about criticism, making literature, not pictures of things. It is appealing to a large intellectual group because it yields easily to great quanties of scholarship; participants need not make art, photographers need not Be There. It yields easily because it leverages its nitwits upon the impossibility of finding the semiotics of photography itself. Postmodernism is a social disease, but an entertaining one.

[tim atherton]

Thomas Demand probably

Or any TV "reality" show

[julian_4860]

jj said..

Postmodernism is a social disease, but an entertaining one

hah! That would make a great email sig

[Steven Barall]

Hello,

The classic book on the subject is: Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation (Art Criticism and Theory) edited byBrian Wallis and Marcia Tucker. It might be hard to get. The newmuseum.org say that they have it. It's the book that Rosalind Krauss and her people used to teach with. It covers a lot of different areas and is illustrated.

My graduate degree is mostly related to post modern photo theory and in retrospect I was exposed to some pretty interesting ideas but infact the actual stuff produced by artists was mostly purely nonsense. It's Art for nonartists. For them it's all about something you can figure out and not something that you can feel or have passion for or even have any real interest in at all.

The basics of photo theory are interesting though like the writings of Roland Barthes in his "Image Music Text" and "S/Z". Don't get any Frencher than that though.

Personally I prefer just walking around with my old crappy 4X5 and two lenses taking pictures because that is a real experience to me.

[John_4185]

The classic book on the subject is: Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation (Art Criticism and Theory) edited byBrian Wallis and Marcia Tucker. It might be hard to get.

I have it here. It is available new in a paperback. ISBN: 0879235640

[paulr]

Julian, you're calling Anne Arden McDonald a postmodernist? I call her a Romantic! I do it to her face. She'd be so ammused by the posmodern title. She works in genre that's been with us over a hundred years (at least the well known self portrait series that I think you're talking about). I know where she fits into the tradtition because of her own slide shows on the topic.

Of course, this is the conundrum with postmodernism ... not even the postmodernists agree on a definition. It's more a fuzzy umbrella of ideas about art.

Because of this, it's less like a social disease and more like a "syndrome." That's a fancy word that doctors and researchers use when they see the same symptoms together a lot, but are not sure what the underlying cause is.

Some of the symptoms:

"conceptual" nature of the work. It tends to start with an idea, and then work to illustrate that idea.

The idea itself often concerns popular culture, depictions of popular culture, or other art that deals with depictions of popular culture.

A related idea is that any heirarchy of high or low culture, artistic or commercial imagery, serious or casual expression, is artificial. Therefore you can not make a case that Bach's Well Tempered Clavier is any more worth listening to then the Empire Carpets jingle.

A common idea is that appropriation, rather than creation of original metaphors, is where all the opportunities for creativity can be found. By appropriating an image, you can presume to have appropriated all the meanings and associations that the viewing culture has attached to that image.

Another common premise is deconstruction. Attributed to Derrida, and related to many other highbrow theories of culture-based philosophy that many artists like to quote without having read, deconstruction is a branch of criticism that promotes relativism of interpretation. In other words, if you can find a certain meaning in a text (and everything is a text. even you, dear reader), that meaning is as defenseable as any other. Meaning is found by tearing the text apart into its elemental pieces. If there are any instructions for putting a text back together again, they seem to have been misplaced.

Postmodern art may show all or some (or maybe even none!) of these symptoms. It does seem to be less fashionable now than it was ten years ago. I agree with JJ that part of its appeal is its easy yielding to scholarship. I also think its appeal is that it's easy to teach. Ideas are much easier to work with than personal metaphors in a classroom environment.

I also agree that Cindy Sherman is a classic example of postmodern photography. Sherry levine is the poster child of the movement. Duchamp was the great precursor to the movement with his "Readymades." He summed it up so well that it's amazing anyone after him found anything to say at all.

[John_4185]

A most excellent Web site on DuChamp's Large Glass presents some animation to illustrate information that previously existed only in literature, along with the author's additional insight is here: understandingduchamp.com/ (http://understandingduchamp.com/)

[Matt Powell]

Paul R hit the one I was going to point out - Sherrie Levine's series where she rephotographed old Walker Evans prints. Someone else scanned Levine's prints a few years ago to bring the project 'up to date.'

[julian_4860]

Hi Paul, I thought you'd jump at that!

I've always thought her work is a kind of satirical ironic neo romanticism, especially the holga anti modernist, 'return of the pictoralist but not really' vibe. The fish pic, the head in the water pic. the placing of the self etc
However, one of the reasons I enjoy pomo discussions is that essentially there is no meaning to it, only what we (de)construct...

Julian

[paulr]

It's interesting to see such an unexpected reaction to Anne's work. Her intention (a concept that would, of course, be immediately dismissed by any well-armed po-mo critic) is never satiric. She's a true Romantic. It's all very clear symbolism and narrative to her.

Milo, I'm glad someone finally brought Levine's work up to date! Reminds me a bit of Klett's Rephotographic Survey being Re-rephotographed.

[paulr]

By the way, Julian, I think the differences between Anne's and Cindy Sherman's work are intersting primarily because of their outward similarities. They both do (or did) staged self-portraiture. Sherman rejects this description, but I tend to reject her oppinions about most things photographic, so we're even.

The real difference is that Anne's work taps into a mix of traditional and personal symbols to create its meaning, while Sherman's taps into pop culture iconography. You could say this makes Sherman's work more layered, or you could say it makes it more trite. Depends on your point of view.

There's also much more of a senes of "oooh, I get to play dress-up" with Sherman's work. Anne seems to just be dressing the way she always dresses ... or in some cases the way she wishes she could dress.

I date myself as an unhip modernist when I agree with Szarkoski, who didn't believe that the themes Sherman so cleverly played with were acutally important.

[Donald Brewster]

Andres Serrano. Cindy Sherman. Richard Prince. Joel-Peter Witkin.

[Daniel Geiger]

Didn't the Sokal Hoax kill pomo nonsense for good? Apparently not.

[Brian Sims]

Ok. Here's my question (after spending the day re-reading Derrida, flipping through Anne Arden McDonald's web site, and drinking a half bottle of good wine while contemplating the 3rd phase of capitalism): can someone be a "modern" photographer and still have strong post-modern political leanings? The cognitive dissonance is killing me. Better finish deconstructing that bottle of wine.

[paulr]

All these questions, and more, can be put to rest by the faithful transcription of a recent Jenny Jones episode, generously posted here:

http://www.ebbflux.com/postmodern/jones.php

[John_4185]

We should pay postmodernist faculty with the idea of money.

[Brian Sims]

Damn you Paul. I can't stop laughing. It's jiggling my mouse too much to do anything in Photoshop. I'm going outside with the camera. I better stay away from people though--I'm sure giggling under the dark cloth is a symptom in more than one diagnosis in the DSM-IV.

[Oren Grad]

I'm sure giggling under the dark cloth is a symptom in more than one diagnosis in the DSM-IV.

Actually, owning a view camera constitutes its own syndrome in DSM-IV, giggling under the darkcloth is only a sub-syndrome within it...

[Brian Sims]

Any known cure? Or should I continue to self-medicate with good red wine?

[Nacio Jan Brown]

Postmodernism is pretty well summed up by the following site:
http://www.elsewhere.org/cgi-bin/postmodern/ (reload it a few times)
I propose that a movement is in big trouble if its discourse can't be reliably distinguished from its satire. njb

[Donald Brewster]

Self-medicating with good red wine always works for me. I always recommend a full-bodided zinfandel.

[Percy]

Hmmmm....

This sounds similar to a disease in the "art community", such that it is, prevalent in SE Michigan: abstraction.
The infected can often be found at art openings in and around the metropolitan Detroit area. Exhibits tend to feature absolute bovine excrement reduced to 2 dimensions , accompanied by "artist's statements", which typically incorporate terms such as "deconstructing", "reconstructing", "reinterpretation", "subliminal", "totem", "nonrepresentational" and the like. In short, these displays are an excuse for those who are absolutely devoid of any visually oriented artistic talent (there is a school of photography that asserts there is no such thing; don't you believe it) to masquerade as artists, without having run the life long gauntlet of dedication involved in the struggle to perfect one's craft.
Many, both male and female, tend to wear a great deal of black clothing. Males of the species typically sport goatees. Tattoos about the head and shoulders, an air of disdain for the eating of any animal (yea, verily, even fish and foul) cooked or raw, an exaggerated propensity for body piercing, and a particularly annoying habit of quoting (and misquoting) long dead German philosophers are identifying characteristics.

One should exercise caution in approaching those infected by this disease; they typically lurk about galleries, looking for pseudo-intellectual prey. They have been known to lure unsuspecting victims with knowing winks and nods of a non sequitor bent, followed by vicious, unprovoked bursts of hot air, and shrieks of enraged, passionate opposition to the status quo (whatever the status quo may be or be perceived to be at that particular time).

Much like the rattlesnake of the North American West, the infected tend to warn their victims before striking. Typically, sounds approximating the English language serve as warning calls. Terms such as "brother" "my brotha"(be particularly suspect of this one, especially if directed toward women), "my sista", "right on", "peace" and "I'm blessed" are usually harbingers of an imminent attack.

Once disabled by cheap red (some times white) wine, seemingly named after fictional characters from a poorly directed mafia movie, one might find it particularly difficult to extract oneself from a politically correct, pseudo-psycho-intellecual attack capable of eliciting considerable consternation.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[John Kasaian]

Percy,
LOL!

[Kirk Gittings]

"I date myself as an unhip modernist when I agree with Szarkoski, who didn't believe that the themes Sherman so cleverly played with were acutally important."

Well said Paul,

Most postmoderism is mostly postmortem.

[Walt Calahan]

Those who can't do art, but get paid better than artists because they have personalities that need to manage and control by labeling others and thus get jobs running museums, are the source of all this stuff.

I can imagine the cave painting artists putting up with the same thing 10,000 years ago. Oh so post-modern.

Live in the present. HA!

[William Mortensen]

As my work seems so traditional, I've been trying to move towards a more current direction. I'm caught between post-modern and large format hip-hop, but you guys arn't helping at all... ; )

[John_4185]

an air of disdain for the eating of any animal

If eating animals is bad, then why are they made of meat?

[Michael Chmilar]

The postmodernism generator reminds me of: SCIgen - An Automatic CS Paper Generator (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/). It was used to generate a paper that was accepted to The 9th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (http://www.iiisci.org/sci2005/website/default.asp). Accepting a paper written by a random phrase generator attests to the "quality" of the conference!



The disease of "academic wanking" is not restricted to the world of art and literature.

[paulr]

"'m caught between post-modern and large format hip-hop, but you guys arn't helping at all... ; )"

I want to help! post some large format hip hop for us (or have you already deconstructed it?)

[Jeff Moore]

Would a 5' x 10' print of a gazillion cigarette butts be considered post-modern? Or just PC? Maybe even Post-modern PC?

[William Mortensen]

"I want to help! post some large format hip hop for us (or have you already deconstructed it?)"

Yo, homie, what it is? Large format hip hop ain't about the photos, it's about the bling bling! Look for me at the next view camera conference; I'll be the one with the gold-plated spot-meter on a big gold chain around my neck and a leopard-skin dark cloth...

(Sorry, Sarah. We're not very helpful...)

[John Kasaian]

"By curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece"---GK Chesterton, to which I'll add that the post modernist critic has passed to yet another proposition which is that a masterpiece that is unpopular is still a masterpiece only if someone who thinks it is can explain in incomprehensible words why it is, while getting paid to do so.

GK also said:
"The decay of society is praised by artists as the decay of a corpse is praised by worms."